China’s “Getting to Zero” campaign to end AIDS epidemic sees great strides

World Today

CGTN

Published December 1, 2015 at 12:25 PM
Updated December 7, 2015 at 2:41 PM

China has been strongly calling for more effort to fight the AIDS epidemic, under the “Getting to Zero” public campaign launched this year.

aids 4

According to the China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission, there were 501,000 reported people living with HIV/AIDS in the country by the end of 2014, including 296,000 people living with HIV and 205,000 AIDS patients, and 159,000 deaths reported around the country.

Due to the implementation of a series of treatment and care measures, such as antiretroviral therapy, the fatality rate of AIDS has dropped gradually and the number of deaths has become stable.

aids2

Sexual intercourse is the primary mode of HIV transmission with sexual transmission between men increasing dramatically. Of the new cases diagnosed each year, the percentage of sexually transmitted cases had increased from 33.1 percent in 2006 to 92.2 percent in 2014, with the male transmission rate increasing from 2.5 percent in 2006 to 25.8 percent in 2014.

A new at-risk group is also growing fast: young people between the ages of 15-24. In the last five years, HIV infections among this group have seen an annual growth of about 35 percent. A report released on Monday by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China says that during the first ten months of this year, over 14,000 people in this age group were infected by the HIV virus, a 10 percent increase from last year.

To reverse the trend, education authorities are making HIV prevention classes compulsory for middle and high school students.

aids 3

Worldwide, bnew HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths have fallen 35 percent and 42 percent respectively in 2014 since the peak of the epidemic. In 2000, only 10 million people were on treatment globally, but by June 2015, this had increased to 15.8 million, according to a Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS report.

Despite that, in 2014, there were still 36.9 million people living with HIV globally, 2.6 million of them children under the age of 15, with only a third of them receiving treatment.

Story by CCTV News